Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Richard Price

3. October 2019 Philosophy News News
[New Entry by David McNaughton on October 3, 2019.] Richard Price (1723 - 1791) was a prominent dissenting minister and a leading figure in philosophical and political thought in the second half of the eighteenth century. As well as publishing on a wide range of subjects, including ethics, politics, theology, and probability theory, he also greatly advanced work on actuarial tables, which enabled insurers to predict more accurately the life-expectancy of people in their differing circumstances. His passionate commitment to the cause of liberty led him to take a prominent public role [More]
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Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science

3. October 2019 Philosophy News News
Job List:  Asia/Africa/Australasia Name of institution:  University of Sydney Town:  Sydney Country:  Australia Job Description:  • Rare Opportunity for a Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science • Located at Camperdown Campus • Full-time, Continuing Employment, Base Salary: $106,343 - $126,279 p.a. Level B, plus annual leave loading and a generous employer’s contribution to superannuation. About the [More]
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Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019)

3. October 2019 Philosophy News News
Miguel León-Portilla, emeritus professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and “the world’s foremost authority on Náhuatl philology and philosophy,” has died. Professor León-Portilla was known for his philosophical, historical, anthropological work on, and his translations of, Nahuatl philosophy, history, and literature, producing hundreds of articles and nearly fifty books. He joined the faculty of UNAM in 1957. The many honors he received over his long career include a Living Legend Award from the U.S. Library of Congress, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor (the Mexican Senate’s highest honor), the Elías Sourasky Award (a national award for work in the social sciences), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and “countless” honorary doctorates. From 1987 to 1992, he was Mexico’s delegate to UNESCO, In an obituary published at the UNAM site, León-Portilla is credited with “giving voice to the vanquished,” beginning “a movement to understand and revalue the literature in [Nahuatl], not only that of the pre-Columbian era, but also the current one, which is spoken by more than 1.5 million people.” (via Sergio A. Gallegos Ordorica) The post Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019) appeared first on Daily [More]
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Heidegger's Style: On Philosophical Anthropology and Aesthetics

2. October 2019 Philosophy News News
2019.10.02 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Markus Weidler, Heidegger's Style: On Philosophical Anthropology and Aesthetics, Bloomsbury, 2018, 269pp., $114.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350083394. Reviewed by Krzysztof Ziarek, University at Buffalo Limiting himself to a select number of texts, Markus Weidler sets out in this book to examine two aspects of Heidegger's work: the critique of philosophical anthropology and aesthetics, or more precisely, the working of art, and to do so against the backdrop of the historical context, reaching back to the end of the 18th century. The lynchpin connecting those two parts is his claim about the crucial role of Heidegger's "style," though what Weidler means by "style" would perhaps be more adequately described as a number of rhetorical moves characteristic of Heidegger's stylistic ingenuity in the texts under discussion. Weidler's thesis concerns Heidegger's unique way of "crafting a novel genre of philosophical writing. Such writing is placed in the service of an... Read [More]
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CFP: IAPS @ Pacific APA 2020

2. October 2019 Philosophy News News
I am organizing the IAPS meeting at the Pacific APA and I am looking for participants to present or comment.I like to have a theme. I already have a paper on “fair weather” fandom, so other sports fandom papers/ideas would be great. But other topics are also welcome.Where: San Francisco, CAWhen: April 8–11, 2020What I need for the proposal:Name and affiliationCVPaper titlePaper abstractJust interested in being a commentator? Send: Name, affiliation, CVSend to: sklein _at_ asu.eduDeadline for proposal: Friday October 11, 2019If you are interested, please let me know ASAP. It's quick turn around, the deadline for submitting the group request for the program snuck up on me and I need to get the APA the information by Monday October [More]
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Teaching Students How To Ask Philosophical Questions

2. October 2019 Philosophy News News
“Question asking… is a skill all-too-often undervalued in philosophy pedagogy and philosophy pedagogy research” So writes Stephen Bloch-Schulman (Elon) in a recent post at the Blog of the American Philosophical Association, in which he reports on video-conference he held on the teaching of philosophical question-asking. Observations from the video-conference include: “How important teaching a single distinction is and how it can, if infused into subsequent dialogue, lead to sharper questions.” “Categorizing types of questions is a useful way to help students get a handle on what can feel to them like an amorphous knack that some people have and others lack” “One particularly useful strategy asked students to think from others’ perspectives to try to voice what others might ask in a particular circumstance.” Professor Bloch-Schulman writes that, “In the end, there was little consensus about whether and to what extent we can teach, and ought to teach and grade, question-asking as a skill.” Given the centrality of question-asking to philosophy, the relative neglect of this subject in the study of philosophical teaching is surprising. It would be useful to hear from those who have experience with or thoughts about teaching students to ask philosophical questions. What makes for a better or worse philosophical question and how do you convey this to your students? What assignments or exercises do you have students [More]
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